Atlanta's Morehouse College and Georgia Tech are each building new residence halls. Morehouse's facility is part of a $500 million campaign, with a recent $20 million grant. Georgia Tech's Curran Street Residence Hall will accommodate first-year students with modern amenities and is part of the school's campus expansion plans.
Georgia Tech photo
University officials broke ground March 5, 2025, for the Curran Street Residence Hall project.
Atlanta's Morehouse College launched its 158th anniversary weekend on Feb. 21, 2025, with a historic groundbreaking ceremony for its new residence hall.
It marked the first construction at the all-male institution since 2003.
"This is a historic moment for the college and, quite frankly, for Historically Black Colleges and Universities [HBCUs] here in Atlanta and around the country because it will be a model of what is possible," Morehouse President David A. Thomas said at the event.
The project is part of the school's Campus of the Future capital campaign, a pillar of Morehouse's Making Men of Consequence initiative, which aims to modernize and expand the campus to elevate the student experience and keep the university competitive among top national liberal arts colleges.
The institution is working to raise $500 million for the campaign, which will fund student scholarships, athletics, innovative academic programs, faculty recruitment and research.
Hodan Hassan, vice president of Morehouse's office of institutional advancement, emphasized that this development is a crucial step toward providing students with a top-tier learning and living environment.
In his remarks at the groundbreaking, Thomas shared that more than $320 million had already been raised, with $170 million allocated for the residence hall. He acknowledged the challenge of meeting the campaign's ambitious goal but drew inspiration from Morehouse's historic resilience.
"We overcame it in the same way at Morehouse's inception," he said. "There was doubt whether a college for formerly enslaved men was innovative, was possible or could be funded. We're basically showing that Morehouse still swims in the same stream of boldness and opportunity to educate young Black men."
The new five-story, 324-bed living facility will encompass over 88,000-sq.-ft. and include a green space, lounge area, technology room, labs and a welcome center.
To further bolster its campus expansion efforts, Morehouse recently received a $20 million grant from the Woodruff Foundation to support the school's next major project — a 58,000-sq.-ft. campus center. This new facility will feature a dining hall, rooftop plaza and dedicated spaces for students, faculty and alumni to gather.
"We still need $28 million to begin breaking ground [on that project]," Thomas said. "We hope that our community of support will continue to invest in building the campus of the future so that we can provide more state-of-the-art spaces for our scholars to live, learn and grow into the men of distinction and consequence that they are destined to be."
At the construction kickoff event, Hassan reiterated that Morehouse students deserve an exceptional environment where they can develop their talents, fuel their passions and become future leaders, entrepreneurs, public servants and innovators.
Thomas also called on alumni, parents, partners and friends to help invest in Morehouse's next phase of development.
Georgia Tech Building First On-Campus Residence Hall in Decades
The recent growth spurt at nearby Georgia Tech officially continued the first week of March 2025 on the western fringes of the Atlanta campus.
University officials broke ground March 5, 2025, for the Curran Street Residence Hall project — the renowned school's first traditional residence hall to be built there in almost 50 years, Urbanize Atlanta reported.
The project will join a host of new off-campus housing in buildings with multiple amenities that have sprouted across Midtown Atlanta over the past decade.
For Georgia Tech, it will continue a building spree that includes the expanded Science Square district, a football stadium expansion and the forthcoming Technology Square Phase 3 in the heart of the city.
Described as state-of-the-art, the Curran Street Residence Hall calls for 862 beds spread across eight residential floors for first-year Yellowjacket students. Its features will include a 24-hour automated market, study rooms, e-gaming spaces and a fitness center, per Georgia Tech officials.
The project will rise from a site along Northside Drive, between Eighth and Ninth streets. Urbanize Atlanta noted that, currently, the property — situated just south of The Interlock project's second phase — is home to nothing more than surface parking.
It will be the first housing of any sort added on campus since 2005, when the 153-bed Tenth and Home complex opened along 10th Street to accommodate growing family-student and graduate enrollment.
All rooms in the new 191,000-sq.-ft. residential building will be made for double-occupancy, with group kitchens, community lounges and collaborative learning spaces featured elsewhere, according to the university.
In addition, it will be geared toward accommodating Georgia Tech's first-year enrollment growth over the next decade, while also housing students relocated during planned renovations to existing on-campus residential buildings.
When it was approved by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents School in 2023, officials estimated that the project would cost $117 million. The construction schedule calls for opening the building in August 2026 prior to the beginning of that year's fall semester.
The new Northside Drive residential facility is considered an important piece of the goals put forward in Georgia Tech's emerging Comprehensive Campus Plan, which could continue to transform multiple areas of the school's grounds.
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